


Such a Fallout

by Toreutic



Category: Incredible Hulk (2008), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depression, Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toreutic/pseuds/Toreutic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The gun was sleek if dull and used, and it was cool in Bruce Banner's hands. It contained a single bullet, and he was ready to put it to use.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such a Fallout

**Author's Note:**

> No Archive warnings, but read the tags, yeah?

The gun was secondhand, the silver metal glinting dully beneath the failing light. For once, Bruce was appreciative of this country's shoddy arms laws; no waiting period means no second guessing, no time for forming false beliefs that this might just be a fleeting low point in his life and not an absolutely necessary course of action. He had managed to come to terms with the fact that no matter who he helped, no matter how many ailing bodies he tended to, it would never be enough. Never enough for those the Other Guy slaughtered mercilessly by the-- he stopped himself. Putting a tangible number to the body count would do nothing more than cause his angrier half to stir, and wouldn't that just be perfect. No, the Other Guy appearing would be disastrous in such a delicate situation. Bruce paused, judging his alter ego's reaction, but for now Bruce could feel him sleeping, a resting parasite curled just out of sight. He needed to keep him docile for only a few minutes more. After all, in a few brief moments, the Other Guy would finally, _finally_ be gone.

 

And so would Bruce Banner.

 

Of course, there were easier ways to do this. Despite the accident, Bruce was a man of science, and to blend a lethal poison would be as simple as walking out the door and grabbing a handful of plants that sprouted in the drought-cracked dirt of this backwater village. But he had yet to find out what, exactly, poison would do to him; he had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that the Other Guy would come out to play once the scientist's organs began to fail, and Bruce somehow doubted a beast that could take hundreds of bullets and make it out without a scratch could be taken down with pinch of herbs. Not to mention Bruce saw a sort of poetry in this form of execution: a violent end for a violent man.

 

Now he was trembling. The gun shook in his calloused hands, the final rays of the setting sun coming through the door of the simple hut and making the light dance over the flawed metal. Bruce could see every dent, every small imperfection with amazing clarity. The farsighted scientist found this unusual, considering he had set his glasses on the pallet he used in the sparse moments he had time for sleep, but he had no doubt that the sharp aching _fear_ brought about by the firearm and all its implications was at fault. Sharp spikes in adrenaline tended to-- Now was not the time for analyzation. Because if the physicist began to analyze, he would be reminded of working in the labs where such over-thinking was his job, and that would remind him of the all experiments preformed around and even on him, and...

 

_Fuck it,_ he thought. Now that he'd started down that path of thought, he might as well continue. It could be a sort of recompense to whatever twisted god sculpted his life into such a mutated abomination of his dreams. He silently begged forgiveness for the hellish conditions that had seemed to doggedly follow him since the Other Guy made his first appearance, and he guesses he's thinking of all those he sent to an early grave, but he can't focus and his thoughts are hazy and feverish. Bruce slowly brought his scattered attention to the handgun in front of him, and remembered exactly what had brought him here to this tiny hut with death on his mind and in his hands. He recalled the debilitating failure that haunted his every action, from the  _ super _ -soldier  _ serum _ to his supposed knowledge of radiation to his love life, every mistake piling up until he was crushed beneath the weight, crawling from the wreckage as something less than human. That was it; he had nothing else to contribute other than pressing, miserable inadequacy and the occasional cold-blooded murder of innocents. Bruce had become nothing more than a liability at best, and a  revolting, bloodthirsty  monster at worst.

 

What Dr. Banner felt upon review of his deficiencies was not the expected rage accompanying the awakening of the Other Guy, or even deeper depression, but a welcome numbness that stilled his shaking hands. His resolve strengthened, he idly examined the weapon in his rough hands, sure that this was the right thing to do. No longer would he have to tiptoe around every situation, causing untold damages if he was so unfocused that he even lacked the control to keep his heart rate down. No longer would the other guy come roaring out at the worst possible moment, unable or unwilling to differentiate between friend and foe. This pointless struggle would end now, and so Bruce raised the barrel of the gun and slipped it into his suddenly dry mouth.

 

The metallic taste of the gun suddenly made everything too  _real_ . The cold bite of it on his tongue was enough to make him close his eyes and breathe in the slow, deliberate way he had learned a lifetime ago, when he still believed that maybe the Other Guy could be tamed. Despite his efforts, Bruce could still feel the green roiling beneath the surface, and pulled the gun's barrel out of his mouth at the monster's response.  _Breathe,_ he thought as he rubbed between his eyes,  _Just breathe_ . Bruce had no doubt that  _he_ knew that something was up; the sudden spike in his heart rate had no doubt brought the Other Guy to attention, and while the beast was many things, stupid was not one of them.

 

Once Bruce could no longer feel the presence actively bearing down on him, and the roar he had been hearing was reduced to a distant rumble, he shook his head. The Other Guy becoming aware made even more reason to finish this quickly. Dr. Banner clicked the safety off, pushed the barrel into his mouth once again, and swallowed dryly. Without a moment's more hesitation, he pulled the trigger and the other guy screamed and all there was was green, green, green.

 

 

Bruce’s first semi-coherent thought upon awakening was that Hell really wasn’t that bad. Because while he felt like he had been put through a meat-grinder, the night sky was clear and a cooling breeze blew on his bare skin, and—oh god, he was alive. The realization might have been a comfort to other, more purposeful men, but the fact he was currently in a crater… The Other Guy didn’t know that he would be killed by his creator. He couldn’t have. Yet when Bruce scrambles over the edge of the crumbling dirt walls, he was faced with undeniable evidence of the Other Guy making a special appearance.

 

The village was simply gone, leveled in his wake. Smoking piles of rubble were all that remained of the inhabitants’ meager housing, and the sparse trees dotting the perimeter were all either uprooted or had been smashed into splinters. While the broken and bloody remains of goats and chickens littered the ground, Bruce could see no human bodies, and thank god for that, because the physicist was so close to the edge he had no doubt a single human corpse could turn him into a gibbering mess. 

 

He was honestly surprised he could still function when he spotted it: the single cottage that had blown out from the inside. This must be the hut where he had condemned the two beings that struggled for control over his battered body, prepared to finally put an end to the perpetual battle. Dr. Banner stumbled over to it, picking his way through the broken bricks and shards of glass in a daze. Staggering through what used to be the doorway, he spotted metal glinting in the pale moonlight. It ended up being the wire frames of his glasses, the lenses shattered and the frames mutilated, almost beyond recognition. He thought he would buy a new pair the next time he was paid (The fact that there would be a next time, that the scientist would have to keep living, was enough to make his stomach drop and his chest ache), but these thoughts were not his. Bruce was just an observer, watching in a dreamlike trance as his body went through the motions of digging through the debris, watching as vague and distant thoughts about nothing ran through his mind. He was rudely thrust back into reality as he found what he didn’t even realize he was looking for.

 

The gun. His gun.

 

It was little more than twisted hunks of metal now, the barrel bent nearly double, and the grip looking as if it had been crushed by a massive fist. The trigger had apparently been ripped off, but Bruce felt no urge to look for it because there was the bullet. He picked it up with shaking fingers, and it was dented and dull, but intact. What disturbed Bruce the most were the too-big teeth marks scarring the metal. He turned the casing over in his hand, blinking numbly, until the futility of it all hit him like a ton of bricks. He couldn’t die. _He couldn’t die_. He could be tortured endlessly, could be shattered in a thousand ways, could be pulled apart piece by piece, all without even having the promised release of death to hold onto. And worst of all, as long as he continued to scrape his way through his miserable life, the Other Guy would always be there, rumbling and flexing under his skin. He would be waiting, waiting for Bruce’s concentration to slip for a single moment so he could claw his way out to kill and shatter and maim and destroy. 

 

All Dr. Banner could manage was to sink to his knees, naked under the skies of a broken country with tears streaking paths of clean flesh on a face of dirt and blood.


End file.
